Category: Garden

Harvey versus the Low-slung Cat

Who will blink first? Harvey the border terrier has spotted the low slung cat that likes to slink about in our border and keep a watch on the bird feeders. I don’t mind this feline intruder so much as I think that the territorial markers that it leaves in such profusion at the edge of the lawn might have the effect of discouraging any brown rats that are passing through the garden.

Harvey seems to be winning; the cat looks distinctly uneasy and steps out from cover onto the edge of the lawn. It’s only when the cat decides that it’s time to turn tail and run down the garden that Harvey breaks into a volley of indignant barking.

Bindweed

10.10 a.m., 52°F, 12°C; sun filtered through a high veil of cirrostratus: This bindweed escaped from the hedge and started climbing the golden hornet crab apple. Hopefully in the new year I’ll be more consistent in pulling the strands of bindweed out of the hedge as they appear.

This is hedge bindweed, Calystegia sepium, the species with the large white trumpet-shaped flowers. We’ve fought a successful battle against its smaller relative field bindweed, Convolvulus arvensis, in the front garden where it was spreading over the flower bed, the lawn and the pavement, simply by mowing it and cutting it back over the years.

As I draw, a robin and a dunnock hop about in the hedge and a chirruping rabble of sparrows erupts into the branches of the crab apple above me.

The crab apple looks at its worst at this time of the year; all the apples have turned to squishy brown pulp.

Knapweed

2.55 p.m., 51°F, 11°C: I didn’t get around to mowing my small meadow area this autumn but I’ve got plenty of time to catch up with that before it bursts into growth again in the spring. As a bonus, I’ve got these bedraggled stems of knapweed to draw: a perfect subject for pen and ink.

There’s no breeze so I can get involved in mapping out the relative positions of leaf, seed-head and stem without the plants getting fidgety. The stems are the most difficult to get right as they have to curve gently but still end up at the appropriate junction of leaves. It’s like drawing a freehand map of major cities and joining them with gently the meandering connections of rail and motorway links.

Lamy Safari with Z24 converter and broad nib, filled with Noodler’s Black ink.

I’m using my Lamy Safari with the broad nib, as it moves easily across the paper, building a spidery network of stems and leaves.

This is common knapweed, Centaurea nigra.

Sing, Rattle and Splutter

A song thrush at the edge of the wood runs through some outlandish improvisations, in contrast there’s a dry rattle from a mistle thrush in a neighbour’s garden.

There’s the usual explosive spluttering outburst of indignation from a blackbird. A male blackbird flies down briefly to a nearby veg bed then it flies up into next door’s apple tree and settles on a perch, just watching the world go by for a few minutes.

Shepherd’s Purse

shepherd's purseShepherd’s purse, like other members of the cress family, has four-petalled flowers but it’s easier to identify its heart-shaped seed pods which are the shape of the sporran-like purse worn by medieval shepherds.

This plant has so far survived our autumn weeding of the veg beds, hanging on in there in the last square metre of the L-shaped bed next to our little meadow area, growing alongside spurge, bush vetch, forget-me-not and creeping buttercup and a few rosettes of sow-thistle and foxglove.

Ivy Flowers

ivy flowers2.30 p.m., overcast, 58°F, 14°C: Warps are methodically working the pale yellowish green flowers of the ivy. These must rank as the dowdiest of flowers but the sweetish heady scent has also attracted a few bluebottles which have a more skittish approach to imbibing this autumnal supply of nectar.small fly One sunny morning last week, hoverflies and drone flies were also joining in this end of season feast.

Perennial Cornflower

cornflower10.25 a.m., cumulo stratus 80%, 59°F, 15°C, back garden.

The perennial cornflower was originally a plant I introduced from my mum’s large, leafy and well-stocked garden. It has settled in well, scattering its seeds along our border. I’m sure that we never planted it at this end, by the corner of the patio next to the bird bath. There’s often a blackbird or sometimes a sparrow sitting on the edge of the patio here and I guess that’s how it found it’s way here, in a bird dropping. It also spreads via creeping rhizome.

cornflowerAs its scientific name, Centaurea montana, suggests, it’s a plant of subalpine meadows and open woodland in Europe, ranging from the Ardennes the Pyrenees and in the east as far as the Balkans.

calendulaWe’ve had more colour in the border this autumn than we had in the summer. The pot marigold, Calendula, which we planted a year or two ago at this end of the border has spread across the back garden, popping up in the veg beds and in the greenhouse.

 

crow

As it flies – ‘as the crow flies’, in a straight line – this carrion crow makes a call that I describe as ‘Tchuik! Tuikk! Twik!’ in my sketch: not the harsh, croaking ‘Caw! Caw! Caw! Caw!’ that I associate with crows. The Handbook of British Birds describes this call as ‘a higher-pitched, complaining “keerk, keerk, keerk”.

 I hear the regular ‘caw’ half an hour later after a commotion with the local magpies at the edge of the wood, which have been making their chattering rattling calls in the tall ash trees.

The sparrows chirping in the hedge are a more homely soundtrack for my drawing. It’s feels like a treat to be out of doors drawing from nature again.

A Wigwam of Beanstalks

raspberries and tomatoesraspberriesThe garden is at it’s most productive so Barbara is busy in the kitchen, using a couple of pounds of split tomatoes in a Crank’s recipe for chilli bean and vegetable casserole, which also includes courgettes, onions, runner beans and potatoes from our garden.

She added some of today’s raspberries (we picked a bowl and a half of them) to a batch of muffins.

today's garden producerunner beansWe haven’t been able to keep up with the runner beans. A handful of the slenderest are going into the casserole but I’ve stripped off all the large stringy pods that were beginning to swell to encourage the plants to put their energy into the fresh pods which are still appearing.

As I reached inside the wigwam of beanstalks, I was surrounded by sunlit foliage. With temperatures climbing into the 70s it felt more like high summer than the beginning of autumn.

Spider and Wasp

garden spider with wasp prey orb web spiderIt’s a time of plenty for the spiders too: a jumping spider patrols the sunny kitchen windowsill and an orb spider with a web on the outside of the lounge window fusses out of its corner to check out a tiny insect which has landed on its web but just misses it as the insect breaks away.

A garden spider at the centre of a 12 inch wide web in front of the ivy at the end of the herb bed has more success. It has swathed a wasp in silk and is slowly consuming it. Unlike the spider in the corner of the window, it doesn’t retreat to a lair: it’s been there right at the centre of its web all afternoon. Two hours later it is still clutching what remains of the unfortunate wasp.

orb spider and waspWasps nested under the tiles of the roof above my studio two years ago and, during the summer months and well into a mild autumn, dozens, if not hundreds, of them somehow blundered their way into the studio and I regularly had to release them by flipping open the Velux window.

A few found their way into our hot water system and for months afterwards the odd fragment of wasp carapace would appear when we ran a bath.

waspThis year wasps have nested under tiles again but near the apex of the main roof so thankfully well away from the hot water tank.

Hot Day

large skipperIt’s the first day for over two weeks that we haven’t made the 10,000 paces target that Barbara has set herself on her FitBit. We’re hoping for thunderstorm to freshen things up. Even here in the studio with a through draught it’s got to 80 Fahrenheit.

To prevent the tomato plants flagging I’ve been damping down in the greenhouse. 

small skipper
small skipper

wood pigeonTwo skippers are settling on plants in the pond. On a day like this I guess that even butterflies need a drink. A wood pigeon comes down to the shallow end of the pond taking advantage of the access that I’ve made by cutting back the vegetation.

ant winged antThe ants on the patio are still active but the flying ants are appearing only in dribs and drabs.

dunnockA dunnock perches with a beak-full of insects on the beech hedge. I think that it must have a nest in there.

Blackbird Anting

blakbird5 p.m.: The workers of the ants’ nest under the paving slabs of our patio are getting rather excited but it’s not going to be perfect weather for the winged queens and males to take off on their nuptial flight as although it has been warm and humid we’re now getting flurries of breeze and fine, misty drizzle.

blackbirdAt first it was the song thrush that started anting – encouraging ants to run over its plumage – while the female blackbird hopped up the lawn and started pecking up the scurrying ants to eat them.

blackbirdNow she has taken to anting too, picking up the ants and letting them run about on her feathers. She does this at first from under the cover of the leaves of the peony that overhang the corner of the patio then comes out and continues by the bird bath.

sparrowThe sparrows are more interested in eating the ants. One male hops under the plastic bird bath which is supported by bricks, a space that the blackbird, which later reverts to simply eating the ants, cannot reach.

Damselflies and Tadpoles

pond3.35 p.m., 71°F, 23°C, gentle breeze: Docks, brambles, dog daisies and grasses overhang the pond which is carpeted with duckweed. damselfliesA pair of blue damselflies are clasped together, hovering lightly over the pond and touching down to lay eggs just below the surface on the pondweed.

tadpolesIt’s been a good year for tadpoles. Some are now at the half way stage with limbs sprouting but still retaining a long tail.

A small white moth flutters around in a curlicue flightpath around the edge of the pond, a spectral presence. On still summer evenings there are often two or three hovering around.

white mothred tailed beeA small red-tailed bumble bee is systematically working its way around the geranium flowers.

Field Notes

My usual drawing kit: water-brush, Lamy Vista fountain pen filled with brown Noodlers ink and Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolours.
My usual drawing kit: water-brush, Lamy Vista fountain pen filled with brown Noodlers ink and a Winsor & Newton bijou box filled with Professional Watercolours.

Thank you Jane for the question (see comments for this post) about how I go about sketching. What I was trying to do here was sketch whatever came along during a short session watching the pond but I didn’t want to end up with just sketches so I started writing my field notes straight away, breaking off to draw damselflies, moths and tadpoles as I spotted them.

I didn’t get around to drawing red-tailed bee so I’ve popped in a sketch from a post I wrote six years ago: Summer Evening Sketches

Blackbird v. Song Thrush

snail shells1.30 p.m.: One of the song thrushes is bashing a snail against the concrete edging alongside the pavement. That corner of our garden should be a good hunting ground because last week, on a warm wet evening, I spotted a dozen garden snails nibbling the leaves of the hosta by the front door and I relocated them by chucking them diagonally across the lawn into the bottom of the beech hedge. Most likely they have slowly made their way back to the hosta.

garden snailbrown-lipped snailBut garden snails are getting on for twice the size of the other snail that we get in our garden, the brown-lipped,  Cepaea nemoralis, and, so far, the song thrush is going exclusively for the smaller snail.

Having extricated the snail, the thrush goes to one of the clumps of sedge we’ve planted and wipes its beak against it, probably to remove the slime. It then takes a look around, probably on the look out for more food items to take to its young in the beech hedge.

Worm Wars

blackbirdIt pounces on a large earthworm that it’s spotted beneath the rowan. It’s giving it a good tug when a blackbird flies in and there’s a head to head with lots of bluster and threat. At one stage the two birds are locked beak to beak in a tug of war with the unfortunate worm stretched between them.

worm wars

blackbirdBut despite the spirited defence put up by the song thrush, the larger blackbird takes possession of a three inch length of worm and flies off behind next door’s leylandii hedge, pursued by the thrush. The thrush now has back-up: it’s mate has appeared.

The thrush might have lost the battle but when it blackbirdreturns it picks up the remaining section of worm which is twice the length of the piece snatched by the blackbird. The song thrush is feasting on this when the blackbird returns and tries to grab it but the thrush retreats across the road and continues to wolf down the worm. This time the blackbird doesn’t get the chance to snatch it away.